And those who read the words, and judge what to make of them largely by whether the person identified generally says things that merit consideration.

And that applies whether it's discussions on the net, or conversations in a pub, or articles in the newspaper.

Imagine someone posting "I totally disagree what you said", in response to something I had written. Now, according to who says that, my reaction might be that I would feel reassured that what I had said did actually make sense, or it might be that I would start to question whether I had actually said something very wrong-headed.